TY - JOUR

T1 - Forest gaps, edge, and interior support different ant communities in a tropical peat-swamp forest in Borneo

AU - Schreven, Stijn

AU - Perlett, Eric

AU - Jarrett, Benjamin

AU - Marchant, Nicholas

AU - Harsanto, Fransiskus

AU - Purwanto, Ari

AU - Sykora, K

AU - Harrison, Mark

PY - 2018

Y1 - 2018

N2 - Southeast Asia’s tropical peat-swamp forests (TPSF) areglobally important for carbon storage and biodiversity conservation, but are atrisk from multiple threats and urgently require improved management. Ants areoften used as ecological indicators in monitoring programmes to guide adaptivemanagement, but data on TPSF ants are scarce. We conducted a twelve-monthstudy on ants in the Sabangau TPSF in Indonesian Borneo using baited traps,to compare community composition across three disturbance categories (forestgaps, forest edge and relatively undisturbed interior forest) and between dry andwet season. The three disturbance categories supported distinct ant communitiesacross seasons. Differences in canopy cover likely underlie these changes inant community composition. Surveying was more effective in the dry season,because ant capture rates were higher and more indicator taxa were identifiedthan in the wet season, but overall ant community composition did not differsignificantly between seasons. These findings suggest a potentially useful roleof ants as ecological indicators in TPSF. Further surveys should be conducted inSabangau and other TPSFs to test the transferability of our findings.

AB - Southeast Asia’s tropical peat-swamp forests (TPSF) areglobally important for carbon storage and biodiversity conservation, but are atrisk from multiple threats and urgently require improved management. Ants areoften used as ecological indicators in monitoring programmes to guide adaptivemanagement, but data on TPSF ants are scarce. We conducted a twelve-monthstudy on ants in the Sabangau TPSF in Indonesian Borneo using baited traps,to compare community composition across three disturbance categories (forestgaps, forest edge and relatively undisturbed interior forest) and between dry andwet season. The three disturbance categories supported distinct ant communitiesacross seasons. Differences in canopy cover likely underlie these changes inant community composition. Surveying was more effective in the dry season,because ant capture rates were higher and more indicator taxa were identifiedthan in the wet season, but overall ant community composition did not differsignificantly between seasons. These findings suggest a potentially useful roleof ants as ecological indicators in TPSF. Further surveys should be conducted inSabangau and other TPSFs to test the transferability of our findings.

M3 - Article

VL - 10

JO - Asian Myrmecology

JF - Asian Myrmecology

SN - 1985-1944

M1 - e010010

ER -